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“... rooflines recede from view, but they had no conceptual back-up from theorists. Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy were fixated on the active, probing aspects of vision: the way we peer out and construe the world before us. Their formulation, which now seems at once kooky and clunky, described eyesight as ‘extramission’ – a kind of radar. The eyes send out rays ...”

“... To sustain this happy state of affairs meant cultivating the native Egyptian populace like no Ptolemy had ever done before and also ensuring that no one in Italy could forget how valuable she was as an ally. She was in or near Rome at the time of Caesar’s assassination, but got herself out of the way before she became collateral damage. Then, in the ...”

“... is to turn from the biological to the physical sciences and recall two important episodes. From Ptolemy to the early Renaissance, astronomers thought they were making progress in understanding the solar system. As the years went by, their models became more complex but their predictions were more accurate. Yet, from our post-Copernican point of view, they ...”

“... interest in the Ptolemaic Monument, two free-standing marble columns supporting statues of Ptolemy II, ruler of Egypt from the 280s BC, and his sister/wife, the much revered queen Arsinoë II. The statues were placed to mirror those of the Philippeion, ‘perhaps … to draw a visual parallel’, reflecting the enduring power of Alexander the Great to ...”

“... in standard royal Egyptian mode; the earliest preserved image, presumably designed for her father Ptolemy XII before his death, represents her as a man. There is also a handful of coins, including one very crude issue from Cyprus, which Wyke optimistically identifies as ‘Cleopatra suckling Caesarion’. But by and large Cleopatra is, as André Malraux once ...”

“... ancient sources relate that his mummified body, en route to Aegae for burial, was hijacked by Ptolemy, one of his generals, and taken to Egypt, where it was displayed for centuries as a symbol of power and authority. Ultimately it disappeared. This helps to explain the huge impact of Andronikos’s discovery of an unplundered tomb which, as he ...”

“... are versions in triplicate of a decree instituting a cult of the then – 196 BC – reigning Ptolemy. But because the Greek version could be read without difficulty, it served as an invaluable prompt to the decipherment of the cursive and the (damaged) hieroglyphic versions. The decipherers of obsolete forms of writing needn’t concern themselves with ...”

“... Hamburg, Johann Albrecht Fabricius, brought Logan not only cordial greetings but a rare edition of Ptolemy and seven other books – a generous gift that he repaid by sending the German scholar ‘an Indian drest Buffalo skin’. Logan’s articles in Latin appeared in European scholarly journals and established his reputation for encyclopedic, precise ...”

“... not one star but two; discovered Uranus, the first addition to the known planets since the time of Ptolemy; showed our solar system (now, with Uranus, understood to be twice as big as had been thought) to be located not at the fixed centre of the universe but somewhere within a spiral galaxy outside which other galaxies stretched, vast and unimaginably ...”

“... from astrology) and medicine. Islamic astronomers such as al-Battani made many improvements to Ptolemy’s findings and methods. Later, they built observatories that functioned not unlike modern research institutes; the most famous of these were at Maragha, in present-day north-eastern Iran, which may even have housed visiting Chinese astronomers, and at ...”

“... with it, was an option sufficiently attractive to block the proof of Copernicus by the disproof of Ptolemy. In Darwin’s case, the contrast between transmutation of species and ‘separate creation’ takes on a different aspect according to whether the stress is placed on ‘separate’ or ‘creation’. Again, the two stereotypes of Darwinism and ...”

“... heirs. The Queen of Heraclea was murdered by her own sons and Arsinoë saw her second husband, Ptolemy Thunderbolt, murder the children by her first. Many a Hellenistic princess must have approached her bridal bed like Medea, thinking more of realpolitik than of the delights of love. The Greeks seem never to have doubted that the voyage of the Argo took ...”

“... Pythagorean philosophy, a way of thinking that deserves to be tracked through the centuries from Ptolemy’s Harmonics through Copernicus to Kepler.Riedweg half-agrees with this, and has a parallel section in his book entitled ‘Pythagoras as an Idea in the Middle Ages and Modernity – A Prospect’, beginning:Had Pythagoras and his teachings not been ...”

“... findings drew opposition from university men affronted at the challenge to Aristotle and Ptolemy, and from clergy who objected that the new view of the heavens contradicted scriptural passages such as Joshua 10:12-13, in which Joshua commanded the Sun not to set until the Israelites could complete a massacre:Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day ...”

“... Pompey fled, making his way eventually to Egypt. Advisers to the 13-year-old Egyptian king, Ptolemy XIII, not wanting to make an enemy of either Roman leader, determined that the best course of action would be to kill Pompey immediately: that way, as Plutarch puts it, ‘they would gratify Caesar and have no reason to fear Pompey.’ He was stabbed in ...”